The same narrow-minded interests that made same-sex marriage such a boogeyman for the President are also controlling the GOP-dominated boardrooms of Big Oil, from Mr. Cheney on down.

These people seem to be motivated by one thing only: the bottom line. And they seem to be able to think only as far as a quarter or two ahead.

They don’t see that they are driving us as fast as possible over a cliff from which there will be no recovery. Or maybe they see, but just don’t care.

It was with great appreciation that I opened up The New York Times Opinion pages last week and saw the indefatigable James Hansen offering the lead op-ed, once more displaying his vision and leadership in 1) insisting that the comfortable NYT readers pay attention to the imminent and grave threat of climate change, and 2) offering a practical solution for bringing about the swift change of course we need to avert disaster.

Those of us who have been thrown into gloom by the prospect of Canada scraping down the boreal forest to exploit their tar sands will be somewhat heartened by the strong language Hansen uses to condemn this approach to “solving” the peak oil crisis.

“Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.”

This is not some crazy Armageddon-spouting evangelical talking here. This is James Hansen, senior scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The way to head off this catastrophic scenario, as Hansen and many other scientists have been telling us now for at least a decade, is to reduce our use of fossil fuels.

It’s not rocket science, it’s common sense, and Hansen has an easy, no-nonsense solution for forcing Americans to change our ways and start doing what we have to do to save our planet and our civilization.

“We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny,” Hansen says. “This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.”

As Hansen observes, in practice what we have been doing is just the opposite: “Instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.”

Canada and the US must stop playing poker with the future of our children and our planetary epoch.

All of us, from President Obama and Prime Minister Harper right on down to each one of us ordinary folks who drive cars, heat our houses and run our air conditioning, need to stop pretending that business-as-usual can continue any longer.

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1 Comments to “Help Wanted”

At this time, the pollution of the biosphere, and the carbon emissions that initiate changes in the climate, have all been the fault of the citizens of the USA and Europe.
But what we forget is that the citizens of China and India, and of Africa,will soon want to enjoy the same fruits of capitalist enterprise……their cars, power stations, business enterprises. To put this another way…….more than 4 billion people are preparing themselves for different standards of living, which will tip the global ecology into climate disaster. Their demands will finally reveal the inadequacies of industrial, commercial,agricultural, fishing, financial capitalism and their growth fantasies. Whatever the Americans and Europeans do today pales into insignicance in relation to the future. It does not matter whether or not they believe the climate change/pollution scenarios. The tipping points will be reached when 4-5 billion people exert their rights to clean water, hygienic sanitation, better housing, heating, electricity, efficient public transport, personal transport, better standards of living!
We are all going to have to change our choices about how we live: to adopt ‘social ecology’ as the principles of community life: to look after ourselves and take care of the environment.

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Since launching in 2010, we featured many inspiring writers on cutting-edge issues. In times of escalating crises, we sought to remain proactive rather than perpetually reactive, to not give more power to those who would co-opt the agenda, and to try turning visions in practice. We can critique what is and offer insights into what could be, without becoming embittered in the process. We weren't partisan, but we'll always stand on the side of those who desire peace with justice. We're not posting anymore new content as of 2017, but our archive will remain up and you can still find us on social media. We'll see you in the interwebs...